Foxconn Partners With Advocate Aurora Health on Data-Driven Health Solutions

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One of the nation’s largest health systems is partnering with one of the biggest names in tech in an effort to redesign key aspects of the healthcare system, both locally and beyond.

Advocate Aurora Health, the tenth-largest nonprofit healthcare system in the country, is partnering with the Taiwanese electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn Technology Group to develop a series of data-driven healthcare innovations and programs. Advocate Aurora Health is the result of a merger this spring between regional healthcare systems based in Illinois and Wisconsin. Foxconn, well known for manufacturing Apple products in Asia, is slated to build a $10 billion facility in Wisconsin.

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Rick Klein, chief business development officer at Advocate Aurora, said the two big companies aim to come up with big ideas for healthcare.

“We have a bold vision to transform care on a global scale and believe that this collaboration affords an incredible opportunity to leverage the scale of both organizations to innovate and expand access via advancements in personalized, digital healthcare, focusing on wellness,” he told Healthcare Analytics News™.

Advocate Aurora has more than 70,000 employees and 500 sites of care. Foxconn plans to hire 13,000 workers when its Wisconsin plant is fully operational.

The partnership between the companies will focus on two main areas.

The first component will be an employer-based wellness program using Foxconn’s predictive modeling technology and Advocate Aurora’s population health management capabilities.

Klein said they hope to use their core competencies to develop a better model for employers to predict health outcomes and then tailor wellness programs toward prevention.

“Combining Foxconn’s leading-edge predictive modeling platform and advanced artificial intelligence solutions with our nationally renowned population health management capabilities will drive down costs while improving outcomes, but you need a large population to be able to do that effectively,” Klein said.

The second part of the deal is called the “smart city” concept. The idea is to build out an interconnected healthcare infrastructure to fully integrate patient health records as well as fitness data and other patient-generated health information collected by smartphone apps and other programs and devices. The goal is to make that data secure and easily available at points of care — and on patients’ smartphones, at pharmacies or even in ambulances.

“This collaboration is really aimed at leveraging technology platforms and data to enhance care and improve overall health and wellness not only in Wisconsin but for individuals and communities all over the world,” Klein said, adding that having such information readily available will empower patients.

In addition to those initiatives, the two companies also plan to invest in precision medicine and genomics. They will work to recruit more healthcare professionals to the area and train them in the latest healthcare innovations.

Leonard Wu, CEO of Foxconn Health Technology Group, said in a press release that the arrangement will allow his company to build on concepts already tested internally.

“We have utilized some of these same technologies with our own employees and are pleased to adopt them here to enhance health from the workplace to the community,” he said.

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